Scientific visualization - How to replicate instances around a sphere?
Globally dupli works on the convention that normals (vertex normals) correspond to the Y axis of the dupli.

To orient the protein:


First apply rotation and scale CtrlA so that we start with something we can work with
Then rotate it to the Y axis
And apply rotation again




Edit:

If you want to do that (I had a look at some images on google):




Enter edit mode in the protein object
Select all vertices
Rotate and grab them so that the wanted inner part meets the origin of the object (still oriented along Y) as the dupli start at each vertex of its parent from this origin


The expected setting for the sphere, concerning instancing is the following:



Corrected blend file:



Complement:

To do it from a particle system, you can use this setting for the particle system created for the sphere:



The orientation to Y is the same but can be perturbed if you activate physics, so it is disabled here.

Key parameters:


Set to 'emitter'
Start and end frames set to one (if not particles will appear during animation)
Emit from vertices
Physics 'none'
Render as object
Scale: tune as you need
Use the protein as instance object
Don't use the orientation as you want to emit along normals